I think that we have to be careful not to think in cartoon bubbles, or else we only end up denying ourselves the wisdom and perspective we need to win.

I agree very strong with this statement. Many TBGL people and many liberal and leftwing ones are so angry toward anti-gay people and the right that they aren’t able to think in anything but broadbrush terms. Some are so far gone that they will attack you if you attempt to critize their broadbrush thinking.

The anger from broadbrush thinking may give people the energy to be politically active, but the thinking itself can lead to false analyses of the situation, and useless or harmful activism.

Valid point. Hating ideas isn’t nearly as viscerally rewarding as hating people. Let it go and you reach the stage where you delight when someone is hurt. We’ve seen people celebrating in the streets in other countries because gay people were beaten to death.

But we need to be careful that we don’t also transfer our hatred for homophobia and intolerance and arrogance onto people. If we start hating people like Comiskey then we turn into monsters.

It starts when we begin to believe that those who disagree with us are monsters.

I’m sure you have seen that at BTB it’s one of our themes that we try very hard not to assign those who disagree a monster suit – though we do expose those who have already had one tailer made.

I’m not challenging your credentials. While Comiskey is not a rural Mississippi Southern Baptist (he’s a California charismatic), you are more than capable of translating churchspeak.

(a side note to StraightGrandmother: You may be unaware, but I was raised in the parsonage of a Pentecostal Church of God pastor. We believed that while the people at the Assembly of God were a bit too lienient and liberal, they were better than the downright worldly Southern Baptists. While Zeke “would surely know”, I think credentials hold up pretty well.)

And I don’t think we are saying different things. I’m not disagreeing with your interpretation – just with how others will read your interpretation.

You and I know that this is not a personal form of animus like racism in which someone might hate a person on sight due to their race. Rather it’s more like an opposition to socialism or to liberalism.

But that might not be clear to others.

The form of homophobia that hates homosexuals and would like to see them “wiped out” exists. That’s not what Comiskey is.

Rather, he’s the type that “loves you” (it’s how he would see it) and wants to talk you out of your sinful way. True he doesn’t see you as a friend or neighbor, but it isn’t exactly the same as the secular idea of enemy. He sees us more as a mission field, some person to be converted. If we don’t choose to convert, we might become willful sinners rejecting God and doing the will of our father Satan.

But he doesn’t see us as enemies in the sense that the secular use of that word generally conveys. He would never want us physically hurt or (so he would believe) mistreated or (again, what he would believe) to be denied “the same rights every other individual has including the right to marry someone of the opposite sex”.

I think that we have to be careful not to think in cartoon bubbles, or else we only end up denying ourselves the wisdom and perspective we need to win.

]]>By: StraightGrandmotherhttp://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/04/20/43699/comment-page-1#comment-121775
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:04:46 +0000http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/?p=43699#comment-121775I’ll go with TampaZeke on this one. He would surely know.
]]>By: Jarredhttp://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/04/20/43699/comment-page-1#comment-121771
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:10:16 +0000http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/?p=43699#comment-121771Timothy: While your minor defense is technically correct, I’d argue that an alarming number of Christians who use “spiritual warfare speak” — especially in the political arena — tend to blur the “Satan as enemy” vs. “people who see things differently as enemy” line. Alisa Harris discusses this in her book “Raised Right: How I Untangled my Faith from Politics” and talks about how she and her friends went from talking about how she found it comforting when she traded in the nebulous “spiritual enemies” for the “flesh and blood enemies” she fought against as she became more politically active.
]]>By: TampaZekehttp://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/04/20/43699/comment-page-1#comment-121770
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:08:10 +0000http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/?p=43699#comment-121770Timothy, with all due respect, I LIVED in the deepest depths of the evangelical fundamentalist movement for 25 years as the son of a Southern Baptist pastor in rural Mississippi. I know exactly what they’re speaking of when they speak of “the enemy”. It’s more than the entity of Satan. It’s intended to cast those on the other side of ANY of their debates AS Satan, one in the same, the Evil Empire so to speak. This is what allows them to treat human beings with such disregard, such hate, such fear and such conviction. You aren’t a person, a mother/father, a son/daughter, a friend or neighbor but “THE enemy” not even “an enemy”. When confronted they may then attempt to claim that they were only speaking of Satan, but take it from a person who lived and worked on the inside for many years, it’s no more real than those who claim to “love” homosexuals and be TOTALLY against discrimination of any kind but yet fight gay rights at each and every turn. What they say among friends is very different than what they say in public.
]]>By: TomTallishttp://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/04/20/43699/comment-page-1#comment-121768
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:47:49 +0000http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/?p=43699#comment-121768@Zeke — We ARE the enemy. Our happy, well-adjusted, married lives are an affront to their evil and they feel they must wipe us out. These are not people of good will, and some (not I) would say that they’re not even Christians at all.
]]>By: cowboyhttp://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/04/20/43699/comment-page-1#comment-121766
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:30:44 +0000http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/?p=43699#comment-121766Alan Chambers is in a far better position to tell if someone has changed or if someone is just resisting a ‘temptation’.

Mike Goeke doesn’t understand. A homosexual will never love someone of the opposite sex like a heterosexual can.

]]>By: Michael Busseehttp://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/04/20/43699/comment-page-1#comment-121764
Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:10:25 +0000http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/?p=43699#comment-121764Recently, Alan Chambers has complained that Exodus is a “big ship” that is very hard to steer. His admission that “99.9% don’t change their sexual orientation” may be the iceberg that finally dooms the boat.
]]>